The present invention relates to a stacking tray for items. The stacking tray may be narrow and the items may be mail items. The mail items may further be flat. The stacking tray includes a receiving area defined by a base and lateral side walls which cooperate to form the area for accommodating the items therein.
One application for the sorting arts is the sorting of mail items. A latter and perhaps final sorting sequence often entails sorting items by address according to a select delivery route. Given a large number of deliver addresses in a delivery route and the need to sort mail items to each of said addresses, stacking trays assigned to each destination address are accordingly small and/or narrow. Therefore, for practical operating purposes, the stacking trays must be emptied relatively quickly and efficiently. The quickness is to ensure that the sorted mail items are not deformed and the efficiency entails that the stack remain in order of sort.
Mail items are often accommodated in an upright position. Stacking trays accommodating such items have traditionally been emptied manually, i.e. the stack support has been swung upward and the stack held by the operator and slid onto a mail receptacle or into a container.
This manual operation includes several drawbacks, including the limitations associated with manual labor. Such limitations include human error, human fatigue, inconsistent handling of mail items, costs and other resources associated with continuous staffing, and so forth. Accordingly, a need exists in the art for a method and apparatus wherein such stacking trays are emptied in a controlled and automated manner.